Tag Archives: Way beyond

David is the driving force behind the MMBbS-Hackathon 2017. After participating in 4 #netacadde Hackathons, he was fully hooked and decided to run his own. With the huge support and encouragement from Joachim Maiß and Joachim Kemmries from the MMBbS Hannover, it is already clear that more Hackathons will follow.

David and his colleague Andre Neumann used 6 months of solid preparation time which resulted in an extended 4-day Hackathon planned down to the last detail. ” … and therefore running very smoothly” says participating expert Jochen Berbuer, experienced in Hackathons himself.

It started on Monday 15.05.2017. Six teams identified< Pollution > < City Security > < People > < Rubbish > < Shopping > < Traffic > as their group topics within the overall theme „Living in an Urban Environment“.

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I met Julie Chrysler a couple of years ago because of work. We were colleagues at work. Most of all we are just on the same page with our passion about innovation, collaboration, co-creation. We love connecting the dots to bring people together for a greater impact.

Julie is currently on the road traveling in Africa. She keeps telling me about awesome entrepreneurs. One of them is William – they met in Nairobi end of September. His startup is promoting sports talent at grassroots level.

It is so just wow for me when I hear that young people create services that encompass a giving back to the community element from the start.

I got some insights into how the story of William Wanyama started and what he is offering with his startup.

1. What are you doing?
UmpireRef is a web and mobile application addressing documentation challenges affecting amateur sports. This is achieved by assisting referees in capturing match data in real-time through a mobile app, with the information then being synced to other users such as coaches, spectators and event organizers using a web based interface. Therefore, we reduce the impact of poor documentation practices which are more prominent in developing regions, where sports events are either not recorded or are logged in paper format which isn’t easily accessible.

2. Why are you doing this? What is motivating you?It started out with my own personal experience of having won several accolades with my high school soccer team but quickly saw them diminish in value due to an inefficient documentation practice. In the world of sport there are more amateur players than professionals yet documentation is often poorly done at amateur level. There is a need to address this issue and help grassroots talent in both men’s and women’s sports to more easily find opportunities, gain exposure and fulfill their potential.

3. What were the most difficult obstacles, problems you encountered on the way?
Our growth has been impacted by a lack of resources. Largely in the form of funding and team size.

4. How did you overcome them?
By basing our operations in the iHub community, we have been able to rely on its members and services to help us address those challenges. Freelancers in the community have contributed to our platform in various forms be it developing our application or business strategy.

5.What would you need to have more impact in the world? Can we help you with something?We are looking for investors or anyone who believe in our mission to help us raise funds to cover our operating costs so that we can focus on achieving our goals. We also encourage more developers to contribute to our project as the code base is open source.

Thanks, William, for sharing your story.

Delivered by Techimpuls on our mission to be a space making innovative ideas visible for leaders, experts and entrepreneurs to achieve a greater impact together.

Innovation requires a mindset accepting setbacks, adjustments, mistakes, errors as part of the development path.

When innovation happens at this incredible rapid pace, the art of learning from mistakes becomes crucial.

A movement where stories of failed businesses and projects are shared, discussed and embraced is growing globally – FuckUp Nights.

It started in 2012 in Mexico City and is now the most active creator’s movement on the planet – it means that every month more than 10.000 people make time to go to FuckUp Nights –short FUN – and listen to

3 people who share their stories in 7 minutes and 10 images

What was the project?

What went wrong?

What did you learn?

What would you do differently?

Today there are 143 active cities in 53 countries where people listen to three stories about failure each lasting 7 minutes on a regular basis.

Happy to support you in it.WHY?
Because I am just in the middle of doing this myself and it is my “must” to share my experiences with others. Thanks to everyone sharing their experience with me: The FuckUpNight international community, Salomé Wagner from FUN Vienna, Claudius Krucker from FUN St.Gallen and Réginald Bien-Aimé and Fanny Bauer organizing FUN in Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich.

The specialty: Basel is located shoulder to shoulder to Germany and France – actually a stone throw distance from almost all corners of the city – with globally present companies. Therefore the event is trilingual (English, Deutsch, Francais).

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From NetRiders participant to WorldSkills competitor to being an Expert in WorldSkills to starting your own company … one of the personal stories.

If you talk to someone who has been at one of the WorldSkills competitions, you will learn that their experience has effected their in a similar way. It affected mine.

Many of the competitors were Networking Academy Students or even NetRiders before, win the National Skills Competitions, represent their countries on a global level, become expert after that and continue to support the Skills competitions in the years after that. Here is one of many examples:

Adrian Flodell with expert Andreas Strömgren

The Swedish Team
Adrian Flodell is a Networking Academy Student from Katrineholms Tekniska College
Andreas Strömgren competed at the WorldSkills 2007 in Shizuoka and already was the Swedish expert in Leipzig 2013.

NEW this Year

This year will be the largest competition ever, there are new technical description and a couple of new rules upon that. Many experienced experts will help the expert team to deal with all changes.

For the first time we are launching a pilot initiative to connect Cisco experts with competitors as they prepare for the competition in August.

Another new activity: a hackathon-style event where WorldSkills Champions and local technologists team up to solve real-world problems faced by Brazilian NGOs: 12-15 August, 2015 in São Paulo wsdc2015.worldskills.org

Cisco got really good learning materials for understanding Cisco’s devices and all the networking technology.

Tanel Pèep, Estonia

Stay tuned! More from and about WorldSkills competitors will follow ….

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Bo Lindborg is a leader in IT Education, teacher and Cisco Networking Academy instructor for many years. I know him since a few months and am really happy that we have become colleagues and friends organizing the Nordics & Baltics NETACAD Conference together in May 2015

Bo is the one in the middle of the photo – getting to know more about him is showing me that he is a really amazing person:

Inpired by a thought-provoking conversations about emerging markets with Paul Mountford – a Cisco executive – at the 10-year Networking Academy anniversary in Istanbul, he started thinking about the idea to send his students to other countries to help build networks.

He started searching for contacts using the Academy Netspace arena and was supported by Aine Doris and Nuno Guarda to get help finding a contact there. It resulted in coming into contact with Ms.Maria Salud De Los Santos who is the legal head contact person at the University of Cebu (UC) in the Philippines. READ MORE…

Meeting other academies is my main way in finding opportunities for collaboration. In this sense, there is no better path in sharing insightful experiences between academies.

Let it be known wide and clear that student should truly appreciate that the Cisco academy is global and worldwide. Let everyone know that Cisco Academy program makes things happen and it changes lives.

My future dream is to build bridges between Cisco academies all over the world. If anyone is interested to know more about my projects, please write to me.
[please find contact in the full article]

Thank you very much Bo, for all your initiatives. I am happy to support your ventures …

We closely work with Cisco Networking Academies in several locations in Austria connecting with students during their studies at the academies. We are looking for people with knowledge in the area of Voice, Data Center and Networking Technology.

NTS is closely working with the University of Applied Science FH St.Pölten because they have a strong Cisco focus in their study program. The students at FH St.Pölten usually come from HTL Spengergasse or HTL Rennweg which are among the most renowned Cisco Networking Academies in Austria.

The interaction between the academy and NTS encompasses a close relationship between NTS HR and the manager of the Cisco Networking Academy FH St.Pölten, the offer for a three months internship at NTS to students as well as an exchange of thought between NTS and the Cisco Networking Academy FH St.Pölten about the development of the curricula towards topics needed in the market, such as for example voice and data center knowledge.

The NTS Trainee Program

Studies at a University of Applied Sciences in Austria have the requirement to complete a three months professional internship with a company during their Bachelor-studies. This three months internship is offered to students from the FH St.Pölten. There is no more recruitment or advertising of the internship positions needed because of the close contact resulting in students being selected on a very direct and personal level.

At NTS the three months internship is called trainee program and about 3 to 4 trainees are taken every year. When the students start at NTS, they get a mentor assigned based on their topic of interest. They have the support of this mentor also for a project they have to complete for their studies. At the same time they work with customers from their first day onwards.

During the three months it is easily possible to see if the young talent has the required knowledge and attitude as well as if there is a cultural fit. In return the intern can see if NTS is a company he or she wants to work for. The experience is that all trainees are being offered employment, accept it and stay in the company.

If the students do want to continue their Master studies for another two years. NTS offers them to work part-time for 20 hours and 100% employment after they complete their Masters.

Can you describe the impact this had on NTS?

Due to the closeness to the Cisco Networking Academies NTS is able to plan with and rely on a talent pipeline for their company development plan. The key factors are:

Very high (almost 100%) employee retention rate
We have almost no loss of employees, they enjoy their work. Giving our young talents responsibilities and valuing their contribution leads them paying back double.

Almost doubled the size of the company in 3 years
NTS managed to grow the company from about 80 employees to almost double the number today in only 3 years.

Have an open company culture with motivated people and a constant new technology inflow
The motivation of the young people is worth a whole lot for NTS. They are open for new ideas and new topics. They also bring new skills into the teams that are very important for the overall development of the company.

We include FH St.Poelten into our development plan, we could not achieve our company goals without them.

Are there other ways you engage with education and society?

NTS is engaging in the new initiative of Cisco Austria and Cisco Networking Academy Austria, the Top Talent Club Austria. Since there were not yet any female applicants for the NTS trainee program, NTS want to support women coming into IT. Therefore NTS and the FH St.Pölten, initiated and supported by the Cisco Networking Academy Program Management Austria, are in the process of designing a program and/or initiative supporting und mentoring female students already during their studies to keep them motivated to actually finish their studies.

There is also an initiative being designed that should help the FH St.Pölten to attract more female students to their study programs.

NTS – CISCO GOLD PARTNER in AUSTRIA www.nts.eu The Company was founded 19 years ago by Herr Albler and Herr Koller in Graz, Austria. The collaboration and early engagement with Networking Academy Students is and has been instrumental for building a pipeline of highly qualified and motivated young talents for their company development.

14:00 – 15:00Demo Project Jukebox: How can a Jukebox be implemented with todays technology? Patrick Winter, Fabian Terranova, Tiago PinheiroVocational students from the Networking Academy at the BBB Baden